Bowe Bergdahl to Face Court-Martial on Desertion Charges

A top Army commander on Monday ordered that Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl face a court-martial on charges of desertion and endangering troops stemming from his decision to leave his outpost in 2009, a move that prompted a huge manhunt in the wilds of eastern Afghanistan and landed him in nearly five years of harsh Taliban captivity.

The decision by Gen. Robert B. Abrams, head of Army Forces Command at Fort Bragg, N.C., means that Sergeant Bergdahl, 29, faces a possible life sentence. That is a far more serious penalty than had been recommended by the Army’s investigating officer, who testified at the sergeant’s preliminary hearing in September that prison would be “inappropriate.”

According to Sergeant Bergdahl’s defense lawyers, the Army lawyer who presided over the preliminary hearing also recommended that he face neither jail time nor a punitive discharge and that he go before an intermediate tribunal known as a “special court-martial,” where the most severe penalty possible would be a year of confinement.

Monday’s decision rejecting that recommendation means that Sergeant Bergdahl now faces a maximum five-year penalty if ultimately convicted by a military jury of desertion, as well as potential life imprisonment on the more serious charge of misbehavior before the enemy, which in this case means endangering the troops who were sent to search for him after he disappeared.

Sergeant Bergdahl has been the focus of attacks by Republicans in Congress and on the presidential campaign, and it is far from clear that General Abrams’s decision will temper their criticisms.

Donald J. Trump, for one, has called the sergeant a “traitor” who should be executed, while Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona and the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, has vowed to hold hearings if the sergeant is not punished.

Last week, House Republicans issued a report portraying as reckless and illegal Mr. Obama’s decision in May 2014 to swap Sergeant Bergdahl for five Taliban detainees who were being held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The Army did not elaborate on Monday’s decision by General Abrams, or on why he decided that Sergeant Bergdahl should face the potential for a far more serious punishment than what the two independent Army fact-finders had recommended. A spokesman for Army Forces Command at Fort Bragg noted in an email that recommendations made by preliminary hearing officers “are advisory in nature.”

No date has been set for Sergeant Bergdahl’s next court hearing, which will be held at Fort Bragg, the Army said. He is currently assigned to the Army’s Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston, the site of his preliminary hearing in September.

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Sgt. Bowe BergdahlCreditU.S. Army

In a terse statement after the decision, Sergeant Bergdahl’s chief defense lawyer, Eugene R. Fidell, said that General Abrams “did not follow the advice of the preliminary hearing officer who heard the witnesses,” and added that he “had hoped the case would not go in this direction.”

He also criticized some politicians who have spoken out on the case, saying they have inflamed opinions against the sergeant.

“We again ask that Donald Trump cease his prejudicial monthslong campaign of defamation against our client,” Mr. Fidell said in a statement. “We also ask that the House and Senate Armed Services Committees avoid any further statements or actions that prejudice our client’s right to a fair trial.”

Mr. McCain’s office declined to comment on Monday.

General Abrams’s decision came just days after Sergeant Bergdahl was heard for the first time publicly explaining why he left his base, in taped interviews that were broadcast by the podcast “Serial” last week.

In the interviews, which were recorded by Mark Boal, the screenwriter and producer, Sergeant Bergdahl said that he realized within 20 minutes of leaving that he had done “something serious.”

In the interviews, he told the same story that he had described to the Army’s investigating officer, Lt. Gen. Kenneth Dahl, about why he left the outpost: He wanted to cause a crisis by hiking to another base 18 miles away that would allow him to have an audience with a senior Army commander where he could outline what he felt were serious leadership problems endangering his unit.

Sergeant Bergdahl told Mr. Boal that during his hike he had also decided to surveil Taliban fighters emplacing improvised explosive devices that could be used to kill American soldiers, and to turn that information over to commanders when he arrived at the other base. He said that he “was trying to prove to the world” that he was a top soldier, and that in some sense he even wanted to emulate someone like Jason Bourne, the spy-movie character.

The Army Forces Command spokesman said those statements on “Serial” played no role in General Abrams’s announcement, or its timing.

But some critics doubted that. Joe Kasper, the chief of staff for Representative Duncan Hunter of California, a Republican helping lead congressional efforts to investigate the trade for Sergeant Bergdahl, said the sergeant’s comments “forced the Army’s hand.”

“When that podcast hit, whatever sympathy there was for Bergdahl dried up,” Mr. Kasper said. “He did himself absolutely no favors by talking.”

Republicans have asserted that the swap would embolden the Taliban to kidnap other Americans and that it was done without the required notification of Congress. Some Republicans and members of Sergeant Bergdahl’s unit have also asserted that a half-dozen or more American troops died searching for him.

But in his testimony, General Dahl — who was recently promoted from major general to lieutenant general — said that no troops had died specifically searching for Sergeant Bergdahl and that no evidence was found to support claims that he intended to walk to China or India or that he was a Taliban sympathizer.

At the Texas hearing, an Army prosecutor, Maj. Margaret Kurz, described a frantic but fruitless search for Sergeant Bergdahl in the weeks after he disappeared.

“For 45 days, thousands of soldiers toiled in the heat, dirt, misery and sweat with almost no rest, little water and little food to find the accused,” Major Kurz said. “Fatigued and growing disheartened, they search for the accused knowing he left deliberately.”

The prosecution’s witnesses included Sergeant Bergdahl’s former platoon leader and company and battalion commanders, who all recounted the scramble to find the soldier after he was reported missing early on June 30, 2009.

His former platoon leader, Capt. John Billings, testified about his “utter disbelief that I couldn’t find one of my own men.”

He and the other commanders said soldiers searched almost nonstop, never knowing when the ordeal would end, while their underlying mission to support Afghan security forces fell by the wayside. The manhunt involved thousands of troops across thousands of square miles.

General Dahl described Sergeant Bergdahl as a truthful but delusional soldier, who identified with John Galt, the hero of Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged.” He also said that Sergeant Bergdahl’s worries about severe problems in his unit were unwarranted, but that he found that his concerns were sincerely held.

Another defense witness, Terrence Russell, who debriefed Sergeant Bergdahl after his release, testified that the sergeant had suffered more in captivity than any American since Vietnam, including beatings with rubber hoses and copper cables, and uncontrollable diarrhea for more than three years.

The defense team, led by Mr. Fidell, argued that Sergeant Bergdahl did everything an American serviceman was supposed to do in captivity, trying to escape numerous times despite the harsh treatment the attempts brought him, and never revealing secrets.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: General Orders Bergdahl to Face a Court-Martial. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe